Alice in Gangland: Read the Prologue

Welcome to Gangland.

If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.

But if you leave, it will cost you.

Gangland: A city, about the size of Atlanta, GA, located somewhere in the United States. Although the city has an official name, the residents who live there call it Gangland.

Previously split into 4 sections dominated by 4 gangs, Gangland is now separated into 2 sections, the northwest and the southeast. These two gangs are now at war for control of the entire city.

The Eastside gang, known as the 517 Boyz, are led by a man who calls himself Monster. His need for power is what destroyed the peace between the 4 sections after he took control of the southern territory.

The Westside gang is the G Squad. They are led by a man the streets know as Mecca. After Monster took over the south, he was forced to take control of the north to maintain the balance.

The war for control of Gangland has led to murders and violence so horrific that it drew national attention and a public outcry for the government to do something about the violence. The government’s response to the demands of the public was to send in the FBI. As a result, both leaders fell back and the violence came to an end.

So, for the moment, there is peace.

But like every good thing that happens in Gangland… the peace is short-lived.

Prologue

Westside of Gangland

Monroe Street

Circa. 2004

“Ali, I’m hungry.”

“I know, Sashi. But you have to wait.”

“But I don’t want to wait. I’m hungry! I need to eat noooowwww.”

Exhaling out a sigh filled with more stress than an 8-year-old child should ever have, I turned away from the window to face my baby sister. At only 3-years-old, she wasn’t able to understand that though I was older, I was just as helpless as she was.

“There is nothing here to eat. You ate the last of the bread yesterday. Mom and Dad said they would go shopping when they got back so we just have to wait.”

Sashi’s face twisted up in pain. “Okay,” she said, sniffing as tears rolled down her cheeks.

Swiping them away, she turned over on the small air mattress that we shared and pulled her tiny blanket up under her chin. More dingy-brown than pink, it needed a good wash, but Sashi would scream, kick, and holler if she had to endure a second without it.

Within a few minutes, she was fast asleep. No doubt, due to sheer exhaustion from hunger. We hadn’t eaten in two days. Hadn’t seen our parents in four.

The sound of her light snores was the signal I needed. I took off to my parents’ bedroom to grab everything I needed for a plan that I’d spent the last fifteen minutes making. Earlier, I’d seen when Mr. Jerry, the old man who lived across the street, had turned off his light and gone to bed. That was over two hours ago so I was betting on him being, as my father called it, ‘knocked the hell out’.

Stepping into my parents’ small closet, I grabbed one of his black hoodies and pulled it on, quickly sliding the hood down over my head. I placed a mask over my mouth and nose and then found a pair of shades to cover my eyes. After finding black tights and black shoes in my closet, I had one last thing to get: the gun my father showed me how to use. It was right where he said it would be if I ever needed it. He wasn’t the father I wanted, but at least he prepared me to stand in spite of his vices.

Doing just as he’d instructed, I grabbed the gun, checked the clip and then the safety, before placing it in the pocket of the jacket. I was officially ready for action, but that didn’t take away from the fact that I was scared.

Pausing for a moment, I closed my eyes, filling my lungs with air to calm my nerves. I didn’t want to do rob Mr. Jerry. He wasn’t the nicest person, but he didn’t bother anybody and just like everyone else, he had a limited income.   

Not only that, but... if anything went wrong, was I prepared to really shoot him?

Swallowing hard to dislodge the lump in my throat, I then took a deep breath to push those thoughts away. At the end of the day, I really had no other choice. Our parents had left plenty of times before, but never for this long. What I was about to do was would earn me a lot more than an ass-whooping if I got caught, but with the way Sashi had been carrying on, the situation had gotten desperate.

Getting into Mr. Jerry’s home was easy. I knew from being in there before that he didn’t lock his living room window because he liked to keep it open. Every Sunday, he would spend the day blasting blues songs on repeat. I would sit on the front stoop and listen to it because, every other Sunday, my mama would kick us out when her friends came over to discuss ‘grown folks business’.

With trembling fingers, I held my breath, biting down on my bottom lip as I removed the screen from Mr. Jerry’s window. It popped out with little resistance as if my unspoken prayers had been answered. After taking a glance behind me, I slid inside, carefully supporting my weight and trying not to make a sound.

The scent of tobacco and mint hit my nostrils the second my feet hit the floor. It was pungent but unexpected. Mr. Jerry only had two teeth left because all of the rest of them had been rotted out. More than once I’d heard the adults say that if Mr. Jerry wasn’t sucking on the ass of a cigarette, he was gumming the hell out of a peppermint. My parents always joked that he’d probably been that way since the day he was born. Every time they said it, I was left wondering if the same thing could be said about them when it came to pills, Four Lokos, and weed.

Taking only shallow breaths, I walked on my tip-toes slowly making my way to Mr. Jerry’s kitchen and then made a bee-line to his fridge. I didn’t know what a man in his 60s liked to eat, but I figured something had to be better than nothing. Unfortunately, I was wrong.

Ew!

I turned my nose up at the sight of a half-eaten bowl of dried out oatmeal and a container of watery, cut peaches sitting inside. There was also a half-empty bottle of prune juice, a jug of low-fat milk, a half-eaten salami sandwich, a container of olives and something that looked like puke in a bottle. At one point, it looked like it may have been a smoothie.

The door was stocked with condiments and the single drawer inside only held a single slice of cheese. I was hungry but not quite ready to take my chances with any of that. I closed the door slowly and looked around for the pantry. We could make it work with a little rice and a few canned goods at the very least.

Bingo!

As soon as I slid open the door, I saw a brand-new loaf of bread inside. Next to it was a jar of peanut butter, no jelly, but I wasn’t picky. A few cans of tuna also caught my eye. I grabbed as much as I could and begin stuffing it wherever I could hold it. Once secure, I then quietly closed the pantry door and turned around to leave.

That’s when I saw him. A boy, who seemed to be my age with eyes as penetrating as a knife, stood in the shadows, looking right at me.

His eyes were dark, probably black, even though my mother would say it was impossible. She always said that God didn’t give people black eyes because they were reserved for demons. She told me if I ever saw someone with them, the smartest thing for me to do was to run the other way.

That was exactly what my mind was telling me to do, but I couldn’t. I was standing in a house I’d just broken into, with arms full of food that I was stealing, and he was only a few feet away. Silently standing there, unmoving, as he watched me.

A sudden step in my direction sent me into an instant state of panic. Freeing up my right hand, I went for the gun in my pocket and held it up, aiming it right at him. He didn’t even flinch at the sight of the barrel pointed at his chest. He simply glanced down, observing the object for what it was, and then fixed his eyes back on me.

“Stay back,” I gritted through my teeth as I issued the warning. In my heart of hearts, I was praying to God that he did exactly as I’d asked.

As terror began to grip me, my hands started to tremble. I was the one armed, but the fearlessness I saw in him was unnerving to me.

Slowly, he raised his hands in the air and took a few steps back to give me some space. His eyes were gentle and calm and I watched intently as he lowered them to look at the food that I’d dropped and then back up to me. And then he did the weirdest thing: He winked.

My thoughts merged and I froze.

What the hell did that mean?

“What’s all that noise down there?” Mr. Jerry’s thunderous voice called out from up the stairs. “Who’s down there?”

My heart began to race. It wasn’t until that moment that I fully understood the expression of ‘knees knocking from fear’.

The boy in front of me could see the fear in my eyes, but the calm that I saw reflected in his gave me some hope. After a brief moment of silence with both of us watching each other, it was him who made the first move.

“It’s just me, grandpops. I came in through the back,” he called out to Mr. Jerry. “It’s all good. I’m about to go to bed.”

It was then that I realized he was fully clothed, down to his shoes.

Grandpops?

I’d never seen Mr. Jerry’s grandson before. Or any of his family. He never had anyone coming over to visit.

“Goodnight,” the boy said next, eyes still leveled on mine.

I wasn’t sure whether he was speaking to Mr. Jerry or me.

And with that, he turned around and walked up the stairs. He disappeared just as silently as he’d appeared, without even a single creak coming from the old wooden floor as he took each step. I didn’t move a muscle and didn’t lower the gun. It wasn’t until I heard the sound of a door closing that I took off running. I knew that this was my moment. If I was going to get out, I needed to leave now.

Rushing, I grabbed up all the food and made my exit out the window as quickly as I could. In case he was watching me leave, I ran in the opposite direction of my house, crossed a few blocks, and then ran through a few backyards until I could enter our yard from the back. He’d only seen my eyes, and we’d never seen each other before, but something about the entire situation rattled me. Even once the door closed behind me and I was safe, I still couldn’t stop my mind from racing.

Is he going to tell on me?

He’s going to tell on me.

Will I get arrested? What will I do?

The thoughts continued cycling through my head, long after I was home with all the food packed away and lying under the covers next to Sashi. I obsessed over what I’d done for every second of the night and my paranoia still didn’t fade until long after the next day.

The boy never told so I never got arrested, but everything in my life changed that night.

And it never was the same ever again.